Bacterias are becoming hard if not impossible to treat: that is a fact. The hunt is on, and this time the answer might come from the frigid arctic waters off Norway.
A lot of people are becoming immune to antibiotics, or better still, the bacteria they become infected with has adapted to the chemical compounds and no longer responding to treatment. Because of this, more people are dying each year. This has prompted the scientific community to begin a manhunt for the next class of antibiotics, the new 'silver bullets', compounds that have never been used on bacteria and that therefore can be more efficient and successful in treating infections.
Vital new antibiotics are being sought in the waters off Norway by Pharma-Sea intl. These teams will work for 24 hours a day in the arctic winter, since the sun never sets in that season. The reason why they scour in the winter is particular to their search. Maybe, the sea life in these wretchedly cold waters, secrete chemicals or have bio-life that aids them in fending off the disease in the winter that would besiege other organisms in similar temperatures.
The scientists scoop up marine life, and special seaweeds and all its organisms, starfish, anything that is alive and thriving in the harsh conditions of their marine environment. Nudibranchs in particular secrete and produce a high diversity of important chemicals that will be studied by the project scientists.
Antibiotics now in use for treatment of infections either suppress the bacteria, thereby called bactericidal, or are bacteriostatic, not allowing bacteria to replicate. What the scientists are looking for is a novel type of defense, one that is both natural and untested, and the marine environment could be the answer for such quest.
New antibiotics can be made by processing organisms and marine life from the sea floor. Marine life that can live in these temperature have the right 'stuff' to become the basis for new antibiotics.
The arctic environment is highly shifting, very harsh. The organisms and animals that live here are called extremophiles, adapted with special mechanisms that we don't have, and have high adaptive diversity because they must compete for space. They also develop chemicals to deter other species from attacking and/or to fend off bacteria.
The species collected by the scientists are taken to highly specialized labs, where they are cut up. Then the organism are ground up. Plankton is cultivated until enough of it is obtained to allow studies.
Once ground up, the microorganisms contained in the specimen species, the bioactivity so to speak, is isolated. The 'extract', soup will then be tested on bacteria. The next step is to find the active molecule, the exact chemical or microorganism that is killing the target bacteria. From there, if they are successful, a new antibiotic will be developed.
That is a big challenge for the whole world.
See the video below on the Pharmasea quest:
http://aje.me/12yQFkA
Source : Al Jazeera/ 7.4.13
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